A Technique for the Identification of the Optimum Inputs for a Vibration or Acoustic Test

Jerome Cap, Melissa C de Baca, Sandia National Laboratories, David Smallwood, Compa Industries

Abstract:
It is virtually impossible for a laboratory test to reproduce the responses measured during a field test due to differences in boundary conditions and forcing functions. Therefore, the goal of any laboratory test is to produce responses that are as close as possible, in terms of the spectral content and magnitude, to the field data, with any exceedances ideally being applied intentionally to provide test margin. Assuming that the excitation source does not have as many degrees of freedom as the number of response points that one wishes to reproduce then one is forced to approach the problem in a least squares sense. Sandia has recently applied Single-Input-Multiple-Output (SIMO) optimization techniques to the problem of deriving the best possible test inputs. The purpose of this paper is to outline these techniques and to show how they can be applied both the derivation of test inputs and the comparison of different types of test schemes, such and vibration versus acoustic testing).

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